1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus, an apparatus system, an image forming apparatus and control method and computer programs of the apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
Various technologies for improving user's convenience and operability have been developed in a field of image forming apparatuses, which is deemed as an object of control, such as copiers, facsimiles and printers. As a typical example, an operation panel, into which a display apparatus and a touch panel are uniformly integrated, has been put in practical use in the field of image forming apparatus. When a user changes setting of optical density or contrast of images, which will be applied when an image is formed by operating a touch panel or operation keys, the setting controls the hardware processing and the software processing of the image forming apparatus based on the direction of the setting. Then, an image based on the setting is formed on a recording medium and outputted.
Also, a system capable of remotely controlling an image forming apparatus through a network has been developed. Specifically, Japanese Patent No. 3042655, for example, discloses a remote control system for controlling the operation of the image forming apparatus by transmitting commands corresponding to the operation keys displayed on a workstation, which are operated through a mouse cursor, to an operation section of the image forming apparatus. Japanese Patent No. 3327566 discloses a system understanding and performing the operation of a computer based on the location of coordinate clicked on a computer screen, which the computer sends to a copier.
In recent years, multifunctional image forming apparatuses have been developed. These image forming apparatuses have a page insert function for inserting a pre-memorized image between pages or a stamp function for superimposing a mark such as “CONFIDENTIAL” or “URGENT” on an image and forming the image. These functions, in general, include many setting items. The user has to execute a series of setting operations to complete an image forming work. Because of this reason described above, when forming an image based on the same setting, the user has to repeatedly execute the same series of setting operation. It is troublesome for the user. When the user happens to forget the series of setting operation, there was a case that the user was not able to form an image based on the same setting operation. Even though other users and technical support members located in a remote area can execute the setting operation by applying remote control technologies, the other users or the technical support members have to repeatedly execute the same setting operation every time when it is needed.
In the scene where investigating the cause of the system abnormality, in order to reproduce the abnormal operation of the image forming apparatus, there is a case that the image forming operation has to be repeated by changing the setting every time. In this situation, it is troublesome and unrealistic for the user to operate the image forming apparatus to trace the operations. This problem associated with the operability of an image forming apparatus occurs even in systems having advantage that the system can be remotely controlled, which Japanese Patent No. 3042655 and Japanese Patent No. 3327566 disclose.